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Investing in People: Stephen Bagnall

Bagnalls | 14 March

Recently, our Group Managing Director Stephen Bagnall featured in VQ magazine, where he discussed the modern challenges facing businesses. As the economy grows, so too does opportunity – which means it’s more important than ever that businesses can retain staff. At Bagnalls, the majority of our employees have an average tenure of 10 years or more. How do we do it? Hear what Stephen had to say…

“We train all of our own people and we normally promote from within. We invest heavily in training and we believe that is the best way to retain staff. This maintains quality, customer loyalty and helps protect our brand.”

Apprentices are a key part of our business too. We recruit around 20 per year, and provide in-house training alongside their studies. The Bagnalls Painting Academy helps young people gain skills not normally available from their standard NVQ studies: “Having our own Academy is unusual – we were the first to do that. A number of our national competitors have copied that model but we’ve been going for 12 years.”

Our management trainees are also given personal training programmes developed by HR professionals. “This is also very unusual within the industry. We develop good people and the challenge is to keep them! We then develop plans for the individuals depending on where they want to go in the business using internal and external training providers.”

We also pride ourselves on the Bagnalls culture, which is instilled through our family values: “it’s a long term family business, and we reinvest in it – we’re not in it to make a fast buck. We intend to be here in another 100 years.”

“A policy of caring, treating people properly as individuals, being more concerned about results than the hours they put in pays off in spades in terms of loyalty. Our employees often go way beyond what we expect them to do.”

Ultimately, we hire people we know will appreciate the chance to train and be rewarded. “We’re looking for people who can learn and can absorb knowledge. If you haven’t got the right attitude and desire, you won’t get far in our business.”

For anyone looking to join the team, visit our careers page and learn more about the roles and opportunities on offer.